This new lily plant originated as a seedling selected by me from a group of seedlings planted by me at Sandy, Oreg., with the object of producing Oriental hybrids having large flowers, with a generally upright orientation, in the shades of soft pink and white suited to forcing into flower out-of-season, heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art, the seeds for the said planting being from a hybrid resulting from my crossing a selected clone from the strain `Pink Glory` as the mother plant with a selected form of the species Lilium nobilissimum as the pollen parent. To achieve the crossing of these distantly related lilies, I found it necessary to maintain extremely high greenhouse temperatures for at least one week after pollination. The flowers of this selected seedling are characterized by an upright to semi-upright orientation, extremely large size and broad tepalled "bowl-shaped" form with unusually thick substance and a distinctive clear pink coloration extending centrally along each tepal and bordered with broad white margins, this combination being unique among Oriental hybrid lilies, and because of these exceptional characteristics, the selected plant was asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at Sandy, Oreg., with such success that successive generations were produced under my direction at Sandy, Oreg., by natural propagation from bulblets, by bulb scale propagation, and by tissue culturing from bulb scale explants. This work with my new variety has demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of the new variety are fixed and hold true under asexual propagation from generation to generation.
Our work with this new Oriental lily variety has demonstrated that it possesses unusually strong, stout stems with exceptionally broad leaves, and in addition, the clone possesses to a high degree the desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor, great hardiness and disease resistance, as well as possessing all of the desired characteristics of excellence of form, color and habit; the clone being vigorous and a good grower and propagator, as observed at Sandy, Oreg.
The new plant is well suited to forcing out-of-season when the bulbs are dug at the proper time and properly precooled. For example, late October-dug bulbs properly precooled and potted in January will flower under glass in western Oregon in an average of one hundred to one hundred fifteen days, with no supplementary lighting and at moderate greenhouse temperatures.